Gupta, then 29, was with the group's used-car business Mahindra First Choice and his suggestion was to create a service station aggregator that would help vehicle owners pick a garage.

Mahindra First Choice was already into car servicing, so it was meant to be a digital extension of the brick-and-mortar business. The venture finally took off late last year and Gupta is now the CEO of Carworkz, a 30-employee-strong startup.

"It's a myth that large companies do not accept new ideas," Gupta told ET. "Yes, they take time to come to a decision, but if you persevere and present a good business case, they can be convinced."

One of those who had to be convinced is Rajeev Dubey , head of HR and member of the Mahindra Group executive board. "The digital age is certainly accelerating the careers of the young set," he said. "They want to make a difference and we're happy to empower them. The group has many other internal startups besides Carworkz."

Gupta's management style is typical of the digital era. He is happy holding online meetings on WhatsApp. He avoids giving detailed instructions and allows team members to work things out on their own. And he's no fan of the Mahindra Group's age-old processes and procedures. "What really excites people of my generation is the disruptive power of technology . Established practices don't have to continue. We want to change the game, break the norms," he said.

Realising the value that young workers bring in the digital age, corporates are making an effort to bring them to the fore.

At L&T Technology Services, the R&D services subsidiary of engineering giant Larsen & Toubro, experience has always tended to command a premium. Today , the situation is changing, with the younger crop of workers being given opportunities unheard of in the past. For instance, the company's CEO Club, whose members are selected through a lengthy process managed by PwC, now has a 29-year-old engineer.

This development is a source of pride for Paneesh Rao, chief human resources officer, L&T Technology Services. "Young people are now being recognised early. They are the ones coming up with new ideas. Increasingly, the role of the experienced engineers is to validate these ideas," he said.

Placing a 29-year-old on par with people in the 35-40 age bracket, as L&T has done, calls for some deft change management, but Rahul Guha, partner and director at The Boston Consulting Group, said most corporates are not up to it.

"They are limited by their own incumbency and their legacy structures. Not every company can have a separate digital business. The only way for them to attract and retain new talent is to create agile sub-structures within functions like marketing, operations and finance," he said.

With companies like Flipkart and Amazon attracting the best of new-age talent, the manufacturing sector does have work cut out for itself. "We have to proactively attract millennials," said S Chandrasekhar, global head of HR at Dr Reddy's Laboratories (DRL). "They don't know we have so much of digital at play . IT companies exist because non-IT companies like DRL use their products in factories and laboratories. We need to communicate this to those who think we are old school."

At DRL, the HR department is playing a ro le in spreading the digital culture, with a mobile phone app that takes care of attendance, leave, travel and reimbursements, among other functions. The only area where an app has not worked is in performance management.

When the company switched from annual performance appraisals to continuous feedback, it introduced an app through which employees could give real-time feedback. Unlike the other HR apps, it was never adopted widely . "The performance management apps available in the market are just not user-friendly . They don't interlock with other systems effectively ," said Chandrasekhar.

Banking is one sector that has taken the lead in promoting digital technologies. HDFC Bank set up a digital banking division four years ago, which now has over 100 workers, with specialisations ranging from coding and programme management to design, banking and marketing. Together, they are responsible for putting out updates to the bank's mobile banking app and also introduction of a humanoid in the bank's Kamala Mills branch in Mumbai.

HDFC Digital Banking head Nitin Chugh stressed on another trait of the digital set, which is crucial to making his division effective. "We have an agile way of working, which is all about collaboration," he said."When we work on a project, you have to collaborate with various other departments such as legal, security, compliance. We are a fairly connected organisation, because of technology and culture."